


Break Down

by CelesteIsHere



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Unecessarily Artistic, extremely brief only a sentence, its WEIRD idk how to explain it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 23:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12376374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelesteIsHere/pseuds/CelesteIsHere
Summary: You touched his shoulder and broke off a piece of this monster wrapped around him. You asked him, "Are you okay? You don’t seem too good." and in one fell swoop, the walls around him came crashing down.





	Break Down

He's drowning.

Water is filling up his lungs and weighing him down, dragging him down to the bottom. But he's screaming. His throat is raw with his endless cries for help, and his ears are bleeding from how loud they are.

Yet no sound comes out.

It shouldn’t matter; he's a spectacle, smashing and twisting through the currents.

He appears to float silently, though, as if nothing is wrong.

He is so angry at himself for keeping this raging sea of emotion secret, but he can't afford to let people in. They will leave him, and it will hurt.

Shiro's ambivalence towards him, however, that’s what hurts the most.The others don’t know him that well- he's made sure of that. But Shiro is his best friend, the man who always gave him guidance, who protected him, and was the first person to really care about him. The ten-foot-tall steel walls surrounding him are nothing but glass to Shiro, and they always have been. Until now, he supposes. Until now, where it seems like Shiro is shoving his head under the water and saying, "You have to do this. Everyone is depending on you, and if you fail they will die".

He can't handle that responsibility. He never liked being responsible for other people, even back at the Garrison. He never bonded with his squad, and always tried to do everything on his own without cooperating with his teammates. Being the leader of the only force that’s stopping the colonization and enslavement of the entire universe is something he can't do. He absolutely fucking cannot.

So, he hides in the Blade of Marmora. He can't lead when he's busy gathering intelligence, right? Though, he can't tell if it's any better for him because he gets more nightmares about his teammates dying, and he's never felt more suicidal. 

He wishes the Blades weren't so obsessed with dying for the mission and telling him he must do the same. He thinks that Kolivan forgets he's still a teenager. That he's more human than he'll ever be Galra, that if he sees one more fucking person die he'll fucking fall apart-

He thinks a lot of people forget or don't know most of the Paladins are teenagers, thrown from their homes and forced to fight a war they never wanted to fight. They probably wouldn’t have much sympathy for them, anyway. What about all the other child soldiers through the universe? The ones barely big enough to hold a gun? All the children that have seen more dead bodies than they have living? What about them? The Paladins aren't special, and he certainly isn't. 

He shouldn’t be suffocating like this. Thousands, millions, billions of other children have had far worse live than he and still persevere. He has no excuse to want special treatment, and to have his back rubbed or his hand held.

But at the same time, he thinks, doesn’t he deserve this? After all he's been through, after all he's done, he can't have a single person hold him? Tell him everything will be okay? 

His mind is one of those canoe rides at cheap fairs, swingling wildly between two separate extremes. Well, one is an extreme negative, and the other is a very mild positive. He stays in the negative most of the time. The inky, black depths of darkness and suicidal thoughts, dragging its thick claws through his flesh and pulling him in two separate directions. Yes, that’s his home. It's such an awful, all-encompassing state of being so loud and so painful, he's almost sad no one around him knows about it.

Except you.

You, Lance Fuentes. 

You went into his room one night, your hands stuffed in your pockets, and your teeth digging into your bottom lip.

You touched his shoulder and broke off a piece of this monster wrapped around him. You asked him, "Are you okay? You don’t seem too good." and in one fell swoop, the walls around him came crashing down. 

In a last ditch effort of self-preservation, he screamed every nasty word and insult he could think of at you, demanding that you leave his room. He tried to hit you and push you out the door, and you grabbed his wrists and pulled him to your chest.

You held him while he sobbed, screamed, and shook against you. You ran your fingers through his hair, and rocked him back and forth.

When you asked what was wrong, he took his knife and cut his heart open, showing you all that was inside. All the abuse, the abandonment. The crushing loneliness. 

And in return, you smiled and opened your own heart. You showed all the scars on your arms, on your heart and soul. You let down your own walls, and let yourself crumble in his arms.

He has never felt so close to a person before. It fucking terrified him. Everyone always left him- that was a fact- and it hurt the most when they had tied his heart to theirs. 

Oh, but, you. You, Lance Fuentes, holding and being held by him, weeping and shaking with him. You made him not care about you leaving, just for a minute. 

He tore his old wounds wide open for you to see, and you sutured them, and he did the same for you. In those couple hours, you and him realized each other were not the two-dimensional people you had known for over a year, but broken and dazzlingly beautiful. 

He fell a little in love with you this night. A part of him realized you had already loved him, and it made him feel foolish for taking this long to feel the same. He didn’t kiss you, though. He wasn’t ready for that, but knew you would wait until he was. 

As you left to retire to your room, he leaned against his wall with a smile on his lips. He'd never felt so comforted standing in an empty room. Maybe it was because it smelled like you, or maybe it was the lingering feeling of your arms around his shoulders. He didn't dwell on it, and went to sleep thinking of you.

That night was never brought up again, but you and him share a silent connection whenever you meet each others' eyes. 

He soon feels like he's drowning again. It's hard to cling onto one nice evening in a sea of nights where he dreams of raised fists and dead bodies. It's hard to remember the warmth he felt then, when the only way people act towards him is cold. 

But, when he hears your voice, soft and only meant for his ears, he's almost okay with drowning. He knows you'll fish him out every once in a while, and that thrills him.


End file.
